Swisstech premiers at CES 2022

As the world’s leading tech event, the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas from 5-8 January hosts more than 2,200 tech companies from various industries. The Swiss delegation consists of more than 15 startups demonstrating Switzerland’s innovation culture and technologies to a global audience.

Three of the exhibiting Swiss startups have announced their next steps.

Debut of world’s first wearable for visually impaired persons:
In a world premiere, biped introduced its latest prototype of its AI-co-pilot for blind and visually impaired people. Unlike existing solutions such as a guide-dog or walking stick that can be stigmatizing, biped developed a wearable device comprising a comfortable and lightweight collar fitted with 3d cameras. It continuously monitors a 170° field of view for the user, detecting, tracking and predicting the trajectories of all surrounding elements a few seconds in advance. It then filters the relevant information and warns the wearer via immersive 3D sounds. The startup was created in January 2021 after Fabien Mael met his co-founder and CTO Bruno Vollmer at the International Create Challenge hackathon in Switzerland. Thanks to their innovativeness, the two co-founders have received an innovation award from Internation Business Times (IBT) as part of the CES pitch competition. Biped has also recently closed a USD1.1 million seed round from Swiss and French business angels and a Swiss VC and is now filing for Class I medical device status.

Aktiia’s 24/7 blood pressure monitor enters the US market
Hypertension is one of the leading causes of cardiovascular diseases like heart attack and stroke. In the United States alone, nearly 50% of adults, about 116 million people, have high blood pressure. Of these, up to 75% do not have their blood pressure under control.  Swiss startup Aktiia, which spent more than 17 years on research, developed a wearable device with optical sensors on the wrist that automatically monitors blood pressure around the clock and gathers over 100x the data. The device has over 10x the engagement of other blood pressure monitors.

The CE Marked device is currently available for sale in seven countries across Europe. Tens of thousands of units are used, and over 20 million readings have been captured. Aktiia is now entering the US market through a landmark study with Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH), a top 10 hospital for cardiology with one of the world's most innovative hypertension clinics. BWH's Remote Hypertension Program has over 3,000 patients enrolled to date and has demonstrated how more consistent at-home monitoring and digital interventions can lead to extraordinary improvements in control rates across a broad demographic of hypertensive patients.

Typewise launches B2B keyboard
Since its launch in 2019, the Typewise AI- smartphone keyboard for consumers has recorded over 1.4 million downloads and a 15 percent month-on-month. The keyboard features a patented hexagonal design and enables users to type faster with fewer errors. The startup launched its business-specific solution during the exhibition at CES202. With all the AI-powered text and sentence prediction included, the solution allows employees to write emails, replies and documents up to 3x faster. Additionally, no integration is needed, and the solution works across all web-based applications in six languages. Typewise also received an innovation award from IBT.

(Press release/RAN)